


here lies a life

by cosmiclattes



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25553164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmiclattes/pseuds/cosmiclattes
Summary: It had been Nicky who retrieved Booker.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 178





	here lies a life

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t wrote in so long, so this is more of a practice, lengthy character study than an actual fic I guess. I’m thinking about doing something small for each of the main four. Anyway, enjoy ~

**_WHEN HE WAS A YOUNG MAN_** , his eldest brother pulled him aside one day in the privacy of the room they shared, freeing a little silver flask from under the loose floorboard by the window, and handed it to Sebastien.

“It’s a cognac,” Jean said grinning. “Fancy stuff.”

“Where’d you get it?”

Jean only winked. 

Rolling his eyes, Sebastien took a sip. Winced. Held in a gag until it burned the back of his throat and pushed it back into his brothers hand. “It’s not very good.”

“It’s not suppose to be,” Jean said, completely straight faced.

Sebastien raised an eyebrow, and after a beat of silence, they both erupted into laughter. 

Jean died almost fifteen years after that. 

Sebastien had begged to see him. Short of dropping to his knees and clasping his hands and _begging_. He outranked these officers. Didn’t they know that? Didn’t they know he could go where he pleased? 

They had only shook their heads, blocking the entry to the medical tent with a look too close to pity for Sebastien’s liking. 

_You won’t recognize him,_ they said. 

He didn’t drink then because it tasted good and he sure as hell doesn’t now.

He orders something cheap. And it tastes it. Cheap with subtle notes of guilt. So he orders something a bit more expensive. For Jean. For his memory, buried somewhere nameless, hundreds of miles away in a spot he’d never be able to find again. Nothing less, nothing less. And that’s how Nicolo finds him.

The tavern at this time of day isn’t too crowded. A pair of men sit by the opened windows talking over beers and taking in the cross breeze. An older woman nurses something decidedly dark in a little glass near the rear of the building. It’s only Sebastien at the bar until it isn’t. 

“What he’s having, please,” comes a voice suddenly at his right, lilting and soft as a feather.  


Sebastien  _doesn’t_ jump, thank you. 

But his head is spinning in a way that isn’t from his drink. In that way where you remember something but can’t place where you remember it from and you know it’ll vex you to no end until you figure it out.  


He turns his head and blinks up at the figure beside him, and whatever effect the cognac had on him dissipates almost immediately.

“If there’s any left,” snorts the barkeep, and Sebastien shoots him a glare before returning his attention to the man at his side. 

“You recognize me,” the man says, shrugging out of his jacket as casually as though they are discussing the races. He finally turns to face him fully and Sebastien is met with the clearest eyes he’s ever seen. A mix of gray and green, impossibly old but still mischievously young. 

  
And like a punch to his stomach he remembers.

_A shot to his throat._

_A hand comes into view, pressing none too gently over his wound. A voice above him frantically speaking, but he can’t understand what._

_He looks up and it’s his brothers face._

_Don’t try speaking! I’ll find help, just don’t speak! Please—_

_Jean disappears in a cloud of darkness, and when he dies, Sebastien dreams._

_About a woman laughing in a mirror. A pair of hands move behind her, coming into view with an arms length of freshly sheared hair. He can’t see who the hands belong to, but the ones currently resting on the bar look like a dead giveaway._

_About a man bending over a wash basin, toweling at his face and neck and then stooping to untie his boots. This is something he does often. There is something behind it and it’s important to him. Sebastien isn’t sure how he knows that. The water is cool and clear. He’s not sure how he feels it either._

_And lastly, about those eyes._

_His_ eyes.

The man watches him quietly, and as though reading his mind, offers a small smile.

“Your dreams?” He asks simply.

The barkeep returns with a glass, twin to Sebastien’s aside from the height of its contents, and the man nods his thanks and knocks it back in one clean throw.

“Wh-why?” Sebastien splutters.

“I don’t think this is the kind of drink you sip—”

“Not that, I-I mean—“

“Ah. The dreams.”

“—Yes.”

“I think you mean ‘how,’” the man muses, lifting his hat and running a hand through dark hair. “It’s not uncommon to dream about people you haven’t met yet. I dreamt about you as well. And here we are,” he pauses, as though in thought, though his eyes never break from Sebastien’s. “But what is uncommon is getting shot in the throat and living to tell the tale. Would you agree?”

Sebastien wonders if the stranger can hear his heart beating wildly against his ribs as he can in his ears. He reaches for his glass with a shaky hand and curses under his breath when he finds it empty.

“You’re not alone,” the man continues gently. “There’s three of us in the city. We...we all dreamt the same dream. We all met death. And we all walked away.”

“But wh _—how_? Who are you?”

“If I knew why or how, I’d tell you. And that, I swear.”

For some reason, Sebastien believes him. For an entirely other reason, he’s none too pleased that he’s so readily trusting of strangers he’s met in his dreams who apparently witnessed his death in theirs. 

_Maybe it’s the cognac after all,_ he thinks.

“You didn’t answer the other question.”

“Ah, my manners,” the man laughs, offering a hand. “I’m Nicolo.”

Any other person would’ve jumped at the first chance to run from the establishment and not look back. Or, at the very least, not entertain this madness in the first place...

Closing the distance, Sebastien takes the hand and shakes it.

“Sebastien. Sebastien Le Livre.”

—————

Not a lot about Paris changed since 1812.

The last time he had been here, he had been mourning his brother. Mourning himself too, if he was being honest. But that felt too selfish to say let alone think, so he numbed himself enough that a lie felt a little bit better. 

That had been the day Nicky found him. 

Invited him back to the apartment the others were staying at to soak up the contents of his stomach with something to eat. He hadn’t even cared that day if it was all some elaborate albeit oddly specific trap. If this stranger was luring him away to steal the contents of his wallet and leave him for dead, or something equally on par with the way his luck had been. 

He hadn’t expected a full dinner and the company of the people in his dreams. Their stories, their lives. 

He hadn’t expected these people to _get_ him. 

He also hadn’t expected the hangover the following morning, curled in on himself on a divan and willing the sun coming through the windows to go away.

_You can’t die, my friend_ , Joe had laughed. _But that doesn’t mean you’re safe from everything._

He lingers in the door of the church, turning his hat in his hands and watching the street teeming with life. People going about their days without a second glance or care to what was going on around them.

For the second time in his life, he felt well and truly alone.

The anger in his sons face the day he left him was a sharp contrast to the calm stillness he saw that morning. It made him want to scream. That his brother died completely out of his hands and now his namesake, his youngest, became a mirror to that. 

Those officers all those years ago warned him they wouldn’t recognize Jean.

The confusion turned to horror turned to hope that flashed across his sons face was unrecognizable. As was his outrage. His accusations and his pain. 

Sebastien should’ve listened.

A figure rises from a bench, walking towards him and stopping at the last step of the church to check the time on a gilded pocket watch. Sebastien frowns at it. Recognizes it. The little portrait of an all too familiar face peeking from the inside of the face cover.

Nicky glances up, catching his eye. Pockets his watch and intertwines his fingers behind his back.

Sighing, Sebastien descends the steps and heads up the block.

Nicky falls into step beside him.

“How long were you waiting?” Sebastien asks. His voice breaks at the edge, and he clears his throat, though Nicky doesn’t seem to notice.

“Not long.” A beat of silence. “I know you wanted to face it alone in there. But...you don’t have to.”

Something in him breaks at that.

Eternity was going to be a long time.

He hoped Nicky was right.

He wasn’t sure if he could ever face it alone.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: cosmiclattes


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